


Swordswoman & Scribe: A Thrilling Tale of True Romance In The Time Of Smut & Dragons

by CaptainXeno



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Awkwardness, Cute, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Humor, Quote: It's Smutty Literature, Sexual Content, Sexual Humor, Slow Burn, awkward discussion of awkward sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 04:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7207838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainXeno/pseuds/CaptainXeno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric has never been much for letting facts or practicality get in the way of a good story - or a steamy sex scene. Heck, knowing too much about the details of your subject only hampers your ability to write good exciting plot. (So he believes.)</p><p>But Cassandra has finally had all she can take when Varric writes about certain smutty activities he knows *nothing* about. Ugh. Nothing. Ignorant dwarf!</p><p>She decides to correct his technical errors. Loudly. In the middle of Skyhold's tavern. Hijinks (and eventually dragons) ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swordswoman & Scribe: A Thrilling Tale of True Romance In The Time Of Smut & Dragons

**Author's Note:**

> The only thing I have to reliably write on is my phone. 
> 
> On the one hand, since I remember owning a Commodore 64 and before that a TRS-80 back in the day, it's pretty sweet that I can do that. 
> 
> On the other hand, AAAAARGHHHGH!
> 
> So any typos and formatting fails are between me and the phone demons - not my beta.

The Swordswoman and the Scribe: a Thrilling Tale of True Romance in the Time of Smut and Dragons

***

The door to the Herald’s Rest tavern banged open so hard it slammed back against the stone wall. The Seeker stalked towards him across the common room of the tavern, her face set in a hostile scowl. It was way too early in the afternoon for this crap, Varric decided. Whatever time it actually was didn't matter; any time was too early to get his ass kicked by a Seeker. No matter how scary yet attractive the Seeker in question. 

He eased his chair back, laid one hand on the stock of Bianca. Just in case.

“What is the meaning of this? Do you even know what you have done?” she snapped.

Varric sighed, a smirk curling one corner of his mouth upwards. “I do a lot of things, Seeker. Which one has your smallclothes in a twist today?” he drawled.

Cassandra slammed a book down on the table in front of him. “My smallclothes are not your concern,” she spat, “I am referring to this! This piece of - of absolute trash!” she accused. 

The Dwarven author looked her in the eye, then slowly looked down at the cheap edition of his latest romance. “Oh, please,” he sighed,”Now, Seeker, you should know by now that trash is kind of my genre.”

The cardboard cover was illustrated with an improbably muscled and disproportionately endowed female Templar, standing in front of a battlefield scene. Her fingers were knotted into the long red braids of a stalwart Dwarven berserker who wore an Orlesian court mask. He was drawn clutching at her waist as she bent him backwards into a bruising kiss. The Templar was blonde, and a bit short for a human woman, Varric noticed, probably so the pose they were in wouldn't cross the line from sultry into hilarious. But otherwise the illustrator had, by some unlucky chance, given the Templar an uncanny if exaggerated resemblance to Cassandra.

“Swords and Shields 13,” he read aloud “Seeker and Stone: A Thrilling True Account of Forbidden Love in the Time of Darkspawn. Hey, that's actually a lot better than what I had written. I was going to call it Dragons and Darkspawn, but apparently there's already a publishing house in the Anderfels that makes a board game by that name.”

He decided to bluff his way through this. After all, that was his strong point. “So, what's the problem?” he asked, “And if it's the title or the cover art, before you say anything, my publisher picks those for me. I write ‘em, they figure out how to make ‘em sell. That's the deal.”

Cassandra pulled out the chair next to him, the metal legs scraping loudly across the flagstones, and sat, cornering him against the wall, her shoulder almost touching his. This close, he couldn't avoid noticing she smelled like the rich honey of beeswax leather balm and the lemon oil of armor polish, with an underlying hint of the lavender-rosemary soap she favored. Something else, too, he noticed, something musky yet woody. Cedarwood, he decided, probably to keep moths out of her chest. Her clothes chest, he mentally amended. 

“Are you even listening? This is important!” she shouted, with a thud of her mailed fist on the table top for emphasis. The candlestick jumped and rattled. His Antivan Blonde ale slopped over the rim of the stoneware tankard. 

Varric blinked. “What? Oh. Sorry, I was wondering about your chest,” he admitted. 

He thought about explaining, but the way she stared at him, mouth open for a few seconds, was too good to ruin. As if she'd believe him anyway. 

“What!?” she retorted. He winced and rubbed his temples. Notwithstanding the times she'd tried to have him imprisoned, tortured for information, or executed, he thought the Seeker was a great warrior and an excellent leader. Against his will, he had to admit she was also hotter than dragon kisses, with that Nevarran accent. It didn't hurt that she had muscles like a Dwarven lady armorsmith under all that armor, and a sexy battle scar on her cheek like a beauty mark. Despite her charms, however, her voice was usually pitched to carry orders across battlefields and training grounds. For a man weathering last night's (and last morning's) hangover at the unholy early hour of one in the afternoon, her tone was a bit ...intense.

She was only speechless for a couple moments before returning to her grievances. “Nevermind my- my anything,” she continued, “It is *her* chest that is the problem.” She tapped one finger book cover, pointing to the breastplate of the Templar warrior.

Varric leaned over and squinted closely at the picture. It looked fine to him. OK, so maybe the heroine was a bit, well, unusually endowed. But hey, it was a romance serial. “I don't see anything wrong with her chest,” he replied, when it became clear that Cassandra was apparently quite willing to sit there all day, pointing accusingly at a woodcut of feminine endowments. 

She rapped the metal knuckles of her gauntlet on her own cuirass. “Of course you don't,” she scoffed.

He leaned back, took a pull at his tankard. “Oh, hey. Don't be so hard on yourself,” he said “You do all right. That's artistic license. Nobody expects a real woman to, you know, actually look like that. The weight distribution would be a nightmare, for one thing. She’d probably fall over facedown the first time she swung her blade.”

Cassandra stared at him for a long moment, eyes narrowed. He repressed a strong urge to shiver. Was there a sudden draft in the room? “It's true,” she acknowledged, “The balance of her longsword is atrocious. But I'll speak of that later. Look. This breastplate is more than impractical. It's dangerous.” She traced her forefinger down the indentation between the painted warrior's breast cups. “If an enemy landed a hard blow with a maul or axe, this ridge would transfer the impact to her sternum. That would put her out of the fight, possibly even kill her outright. Armor should protect a fighter, not be a deathtrap.”

Varric leaned forward, eyes following the motions of her finger as she traced circles around the painted left breast, interested despite himself in the Seeker’s explanation. “You don't say?” he murmured, to keep her talking. 

“I do say,” she retorted, “And these- these cooking pots she has strapped to her bosoms. What could be the purpose of them? They will only guide a blade to the center of her chest, or to the gap between the armhole of the cuirass and her pauldron.” She fixed him with a severe look and ran the leather palm of her gauntlet up and down her own breastplate with a soft rasping sound. He found his gaze following her hand in a sort of confused fascination. 

“Look,” she commanded, “Mine is flatter, one smooth curve that will deflect a blow and lead a blade to skip off it.” She raised an eyebrow at him, lifted one admonishing finger. “A woman's bosom is soft, do you not know? Perhaps you have not encountered one before? A breast is not made of bone or hard muscle. It will easily conform to the shape of a normal breastplate. 

“Actually, I find it quite comfortable. Many female warriors I train have mentioned they are glad of the support during the exertion of combat. It would be quite painful to have your bosoms bouncing unrestrained all over the place at every impact.”

Varric realized he'd been holding his tankard halfway to his open mouth for some time. He finished the ale off in a few long swallows and signaled with a lifted hand for the barmaid to bring another. “That's quite a mental image you've painted for me, Seeker. I'm not sure what you want me to do about it though. Like I said, my publisher chooses titles and cover art. I just do the writing.”

“Then you should stick to what you know,” she scolded, “Because some of these scenes are as terrible as the cover art.”

Varric slammed his empty mug down on the table. This really was too much. “Look here, sister,” he growled, “You stick to killing things with a great big sword and clomping around in enough metal to plate the hull of a Qunari dreadnought. And I'll stick to what I know- which is writing the exciting action and hot sex that people actually want to read about.”

She flipped the book open to a page marked with a folded corner and shoved it over to him.He picked it up and flipped through the pages. All the leaves were as ruffled as if the book had been read and reread a dozen times. Which couldn't be true, because Varric happened to know that this installment had only been printed a week ago, thanks to delays in shipping the needed supplies of paper through war-torn Fereldan. He noticed there were other folded corners, and also torn scraps of paper tucked between pages. Some of them had written notes scribbled in the margins. A few were stained and smeared, as though someone had carelessly let drops of water fall on them.

He scanned a few sentences, laughed, nodded, and pushed the book back over to her. “Oh, yeah. I remember that scene. That was a hot one, where their passion finally can't be denied and he shoves her down in the shallow water of the ford after their duel, unlaces his codpiece, gets her knees up to her chest and just--”

“Drowns her, dislocates her hips, and has his disgusting way with her corpse?” Cassandra interrupted, voice acerbic and deceptively calm.

He grabbed the book back from her and started scanning rapidly through the close set printed lines. “That's not in there! Is it? It can't be. The publisher is allowed to make corrections and minor editing changes, but if that sick nug-humping bastard butchered my masterpiece, I'll--”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Masterpiece? That scene is a travesty. It's not a masterpiece, it's barely readable. Certainly the, er, lovemaking is passionately described. But it is ruined completely by the fact that what you describe is physically impossible.”

He shoved his chair back and stood, feeling his pulse throb in his temples, his face hot with anger. The Seeker always did know how to find his last nerve and then get on it. “Now look here,” he roared, “Just because you haven't had much of that kind of experience, ah, well, humping in all kinds of weird situations, it doesn't mean you get to--”

“I've had plenty of experience humping, as you put it, in full armor and odd situations!” she yelled right back, inches from his face, “And I’m telling you, dwarf, what you are describing is physically impossible!”

The bard's lute plinked to a stop, Maryden’s song about the Empress of Fire cut off mid-lyric. Heads turned, conversations trailed off. The Iron Bull grinned and started to speak, but Dalish caught the look on Cassandra’s face. Without looking away from the Seeker, the elf shoved the last half of her sweet roll into Bull's open mouth before he could get a word out.

“Nothing to see here, people,” Varric called out, just as Cassandra snapped, “Everyone mind your own business,” in her best parade ground shout.

The patrons at least pretended to turn back to their own conversations. Varric heaved a sigh. “What do you mean, impossible? Sure, maybe it would be a little...awkward, maybe. But impossible? How do you figure?”

He watched, confused and strangely captivated, as Cassandra leaned across to set the book, candlestick, and his empty tankard on the windowsill beside them. Then she turned, sat on the edge of the sturdy wooden table, and laid down on it. Metal scraped, leather creaked, as she, well, the word that wouldn't leave his mind was *writhed* her way to the middle.

“You said the water of the ford was halfway to their knees,” she began, as if this were a perfectly normal conversation. 

“I gotta stop drinking shit Sera gives me,” he muttered to himself.

“Pay attention,” Cassandra scolded, “This is important. You see, even if the water is only a foot deep, if I lie on my back in the streambed, already I am in above my head.” She held her palm a couple inches above her face, miming where the water of the shallow stream described in the book might be.

Varric rubbed the bridge of his nose. “In above your head? You and me both, Seeker,” he mumbled. “So you lift your head a little then,” he rasped, irritably.

“I cannot,” she said, demonstrating. “My gorget is in the way.” She tugged at the wide band of metal that surrounded her throat, above her cuirass. 

“Your what?” he blurted, then cursed himself for speaking before thinking. “Ah, right, that thingy that holds you guys’ helms on.” He rubbed his chin, calluses rasping over stubble. “Okay, so she takes her helm off, maybe leans up on her elbows.”

Cassandra snorts, scorn written on her face. “Of course. I will- she will simply support the weight of thirty pounds of mail shirt, and perhaps the same weight of steel plate armor, and the weight of a padded gambeson soaked in river water, for the perhaps five or ten minutes it would take a dwarf to finish?” She demonstrated the posture, shoving herself up onto her elbows with a slight grunt of effort. Damn, she's strong, Varric thought, not sure I could have done that as easily.

“Five minutes?” he shouted, “I don't know what lies you've been listening to, but your estimate is off. Way off. By an hour or two.”

“Oh?” she raised a brow, mockingly, “Well, perhaps if you swilled less Gray Warden whisky, you would not have that problem.”

“Problem?!” Varric bellowed, his face turning a few shades darker.

“Besides,” she continued smugly, ignoring Varric’s outraged yelp, “She cannot take off her helm. You mustn't rewrite that detail. If she did, it would ruin the one good part of the scene. It's so romantic, Osric Stone behind his mask, Seeker Marja hidden behind her helm, neither one knowing that they have gone mad with passion for the very enemy they have each been hunting for so long--” she clasped her hands together over her heart with a rattle of steel. Holy Andraste’s knickers, Varric thought, I write about it all the time, but I'm not sure I've ever actually seen a bosom heave before. Certainly not in full plate. 

“So, shallower water, then?” he asked, after enjoying the view for a few moments. After all, she was lying at his eye level, since at some point during her speech, his knees had given out and collapsed him back into his chair without him noticing.

Cassandra shook her head, “No. One of the first and strictest warnings given to young knights is that you can drown in only a few inches of water under certain circumstances. Besides, I admit it does sound romantic, but inside the helm it gets very stuffy and sweaty. During a fight, one simply accepts it. In the heat of battle, you think only of strike and counter. But in lovemaking it would be quite a distraction; anyone who has ever worn a full helm could clearly imagine that. No soldier could read the scene as written and find it arousing. Infuriating, perhaps.”

As she spoke, Varric automatically searched his pockets for a stick of hard writing charcoal and a folded sheaf of paper, and began scratching out brief notes. “Hmm. Well, let's come back back to that. What was that about dislocated hips?” he asked.

Cassandra lay back down, hooked her left hand under her own knee, and drew it towards her chest as far as she could. Her leg would go only a little higher than her waist. The layered metal bands that hung below her cuirass to protect her hips, rear, and upper thighs were in the way.

“I see. You can't pull your knees up high enough for a good angle because these dangly bits here are in the way,” he observed, and reached out to tug at the bottom edge of one.

“Hands off, Dwarf!” she snarled, and slapped his hand away. “At least learn the names of things if you must write about them. Those are called tassets.”

“So the tassets protect your ass-ets,” Varric joked, hoping to defuse her annoyance. “You know, because they cover your-- you know what? Nevermind. Go on.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, saying, “The fauld is also in the way,” as she tapped the metal band around her waist that covered the slight gap between cuirass and tasset, “And see here, how the straps behind my knees, that hold my poleyns- you might call them knee guards- will not allow me to bend my knees all the way?” The knight shifted her hand for a better grip, pulled her bent leg a few inches higher with another little throaty huff of effort. Unaccountably, it seemed to Varric like the sound went in through his ears and then headed straight downwards to make uncomfortable things happen in the front of his pants.

She rubbed her free hand on her upper inner thigh, higher than Varric wanted to let his eyes wander. “Not to mention, these heavy buckles that hold on my cuisses- those are the thigh pieces here- dig in quite painfully when I do this.” Cassandra mimed the position described in the written scene as best she could, hands behind knees pulling her thighs up and apart, balanced precariously on her tailbone. “You see?” she panted, her words coming in between short breaths of effort, “This is- the best I can do- and I'm not even- lying in a freezing river- crushed under two hundred pounds- of armored dwarf.” With a heavy sigh, she let go of her legs, turned halfway on her side, and propped her head up on one hand. “Speaking of rivers, as a woman, let me tell you there is another question of making love in water. You would imagine that water would make things, ah, easier. But it does not. Certain issues of lubrication arise. But I suppose that could fall under the category of minor sacrifices in accuracy for the sake of-- for the Maker’s sake, Dwarf, are you even writing this down?”

Varric looked down at his notes. For the last two sentences, his scribbled words had strayed off the paper and onto the table. He quickly copied down the phrases scrawled accidentally on the smooth wood. “Uh, yeah. Anything else?” he asked, distantly.

“Not for that scene, no,” she admitted, “It was the worst one as far extremely obvious technical errors go. But there are others almost as bad. For example, the scene on horseback.” She stretched out and snagged the book off the windowsill with her fingertips, turned to the page she wanted on the first try. “Yes. Here. When they must double up on a stolen horse during their escape from the ruins of Lothering. And their passion overwhelms them again. You could not actually do such a thing without getting a saddlehorn jammed against a very delicate place. At least, I do not believe one could. Unless of course it were a cavalry saddle for a light skirmisher; then perhaps Marja might get one knee over--”

“Enough. All right, fine, you’re hired,” Varric interrupted, “I’ll even credit you as a consultant in the author's notes. All you have to do is just let me ask you questions now and then about this kind of thing.”

It was his turn to shock her. About time, he felt. The Seeker blushed, stammered, shook her head, saying, “I- I couldn't. No. It- it is a kind offer, truly, but as Seeker for the Inquisition I could not have my name associated with...with…”

“Filthy, trashy, steamy smut?” he suggested, a suppressed smile turning up the corner of his mouth.

Cassandra gasped, waved a hand in protest, “No! Not at all. Well, yes, the explicit parts. But you must not speak of your writing so harshly. It is plagued by technical errors, yes, but the soul of a romantic shines through. Your work is truly literature. Smutty literature, perhaps. Nonetheless...” she trailed off, a flustered blush darkening the skin above her cheekbones like a wine stain.

Varric let her suffer for a bit, then offered, “Fine, how about you choose a pen name instead, and I'll even write a few chapters about the dishonored Knight-Captain returning to clear the charges against her. Heck, maybe she could even take vengeance against the nobles who accused her.”

Cassandra sat bolt upright, glaring hotly at him. “The charges were false!” she retorted. 

“Well… not all of them. But she had her reasons, let's just say,” he teased. 

“I knew it,” she gasped, “She is protecting her half-brother’s identity.”

Varric gave her a half shrug, and winked. “Maybe. You'll have to wait and find out. That is, if we have a deal,” he said, holding out his hand.

She looked at him, then at his hand, like his fingers might be hiding a tiny bear trap. Finally, she nodded, one brisk, decisive motion, and clasped his hand in a hard grip. “We do. This should be interesting,” she said, and slid off the edge of the table to stand looking down at him.

“Can I borrow this copy to look at the parts you've marked?” he asked.

“Of course. I have a spare.” Her blush deepened as she realized what she’d just said. Varric tilted his head in inquiry, but she outstared him, daring him to say something. “I must be going,” she said, at last, and turned to walk to the door.

“Seeker,” he called after her when she was a few more steps away, “Just keep in mind this may be harder than you think. It's one thing to point out the flaws in a scene like this one. It's another thing entirely to fix them.”

She laughed, tilting her head back. “That one at least is easy to fix,” she told him.

Varric raised his brows in disbelief. “Yeah? Fine,” he ranted, “If it's so simple, how would you fix it? Give it your best shot, let's see how your ideas stand up to being picked over like a deepstalker chewing a bronco carcass--”

“Mabari style,” she cut in, “Try having them do it in Mabari position. It would not matter then if they removed their helms during their...encounter, since they would not see each other's faces until too late. "Besides, one can comfortably support quite a lot of weight on hands and knees. Or elbows and knees. Well. Ahem. So I understand, anyhow.” She turned once again as if to leave. 

“Oh come on,” he mocked, “Are you serious? I mean, that… would...actually work really well.” He snatched his writing charcoal off the floor where it had rolled, and began writing at a hectic pace.

Cassandra gave him the barest hint of a nod, the slightest bow, and walked away. He saw it from the corner of his eye. The part of his brain not busy with a frenzied whirl of creation observed, It's impressive how she can say ‘I told you so’ with one gesture. 

After a few minutes of frantic scrawling, the chair next to him creaked as Iron Bull dropped into it. He set a fresh mug of ale in front of Varric, then plunked the other one down in front of himself.

“So,” he rumbled, drawing his words out, “You and the Seeker…?”

Varric glanced up, looked at the ale, then at Bull. “What? Oh. Yeah. She pointed out some technical issues with descriptions of military situations. You know, stuff like terminology, the physical limitations of equipment in difficult terrain--”

“Humping in armor,” Bull broke in, louder than was necessary. Maryden’s lute stumbled over a couple sour notes before returning to the melody. 

Varric opened his mouth, considered lying, then he remembered he was talking to a Ben Hasserath for whom lies and liars were a profession. “That too,” he said, and took a long gulp of his beer before returning to his notes.

Bull heaved a long sigh, slapped Varric on the back. “My professional opinion,” he advised, “Is that you are completely fucked.”

“Ah, come on, Tiny,” the Dwarf grinned, “Not completely. I mean, nothing major is on fire or covered in demons yet.”

The hulking Qunari sipped his beer, thoughtfully. “Well, day isn't over yet, either,” he responded after a while.

Varric nodded. “True,” he said, and returned to the page in front of him.

***

**Author's Note:**

> The amazing ButterflyOfStorms gave me her thoughts and mad ninja beta skills on this, so if you like it, blame her. If you want to read some Labyrinth fiction where you will probably enjoy the OC's even more than the Canon characters, I highly recommend her work!
> 
> I really struggle with depression and terrible self esteem about my writing. Comments are always amazing - your thoughts, likes, dislikes, suggestions, constructive critique... always deeply appreciated.
> 
> Some days I think "Aw heck with it who am I fooling, I can't write, better quit" and then I get notification that you guys like something I've posted & it gives me hope to go on.


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